Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 (Hillsborough Agreement)

The Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA) was signed at Hillsborough Castle (the symbolic seat of British power in Northern Ireland) on 15 November 1985 by the British and Irish premiers, Margaret Thatcher and Garret FitzGerald. It was the sixth in a series of intergovernmental summits that began in May 1980. Hillsborough was qualitatively different in that the earlier summits had taken place in an atmosphere strained by the hunger strikes, the Falklands/Malvinas War, and the Brighton bomb. The communiqué accompanying the agreement recognized its historic significance. It came into effect on 29 November after it was ratified by the Dáil and the British House of Commons and was registered at the United Nations on 20 December 1985.

The agreement had a strong institutional framework. Article 2 represented one powerful axis. In part 2(a) it established an Intergovernmental Conference concerned with Northern Ireland and with relations between the two parts of Ireland to deal on a regular basis with "(i) political matters; (ii) security and related matters; (iii) legal matters, including the administration of justice; and (iv) the promotion of cross-border cooperation"; and 2(b) stated that "the United Kingdom Government accepts that the Irish Government will put forward views and proposals on matters relating to Northern Ireland within the field of activity of the Conference insofar as those matters are not the responsibility of a devolved administration in Northern Ireland." It could be said that Article 2 gave constitutional nationalism greater influence than it had ever enjoyed since partition. The countervailing axis existed in Article 1, which attempted to reassure unionists of the prevailing constitutional status of Northern Ireland, and in Articles 4(b), 5(c), and 10(b), which acted as a catalyst toward achieving devolution in place of an enhanced role for the conference. Additionally, Article 11 allowed for a review of the working of the conference within three years.

The AIA is significant for three reasons. First, both governments were now committed to working together on the historic Anglo-Irish conflict. A permanent Anglo-Irish secretariat (staffed by senior personnel from Dublin and London) was a manifestation of its rigor. The structures were built to withstand boycotts, physical threats, general strikes, or whatever. The Intergovernmental Conference, chaired by the British secretary of state and the Irish foreign minister, represented both structure and process. Second, the agreement received much international approbation. A goodwill manifest in Article 10(a) promoted cross-border social and economic development by securing international support through the International Fund for Ireland (IFI), which was established on 18 September 1986 with financial support from the United States, Canada, and New Zealand. In the next fourteen years the IFI was associated with investing 1.1 billion pounds. Third, the agreement symbolized profound attitudinal change. Article 1 represented a historic shift in Irish nationalists' attitude toward Northern Ireland. Equally, British concessions to the Irish heralded an era of intense intergovernmental cooperation. They had set in motion a process of change that was to culminate in the Belfast Agreement of April 1998.

Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 (Hillsborough Agreement)

Bibliography